How Clean We Keep the House

What a way to live

Inside a dirty house

We prepare the meals at seven

George cuts

I bake

We fry

Together

Silverware laid out

But never used

We eat

With our hands

He asks me

How the poetry goes

I tell him it goes everywhere

But on the paper

He sips wine

I gulp

George is a retired dancer

With a clavicle injury

I’m a poet

Who teaches tenth graders

The potential

Of a sentence

Evenings at six are dinner

Seven is for television

Eight is for reading

And nine is bed

These days

It used to be

That we’d go out on Tuesdays

But then our favorite restaurant closed

Due to a rat infestation

And now we order in

And pretend we’re out

I put on make-up

And George wears a tie

We do these funny little things

To amuse ourselves

Someone might ask me

‘Do you love George?’

And I would reply—

‘He amuses me’

A marriage has several directions

It can take

Amusement

Is one of the smoother roads

My friend Charlotte

Divorced her husband last week

And then ran him over

With her car

He survived, luckily

But he does have a broken arm

And that means he won’t be able to golf for awhile

So Charlotte says

It was well worth the jail time

When I told George what she’d done

He asked me why Charlotte bothered to run him over

After they’d already gotten divorced

I said it was because the divorce wasn’t ugly enough

For Charlotte

That her husband hadn’t been hurt

As much as she’d been hurt

And she was trying to even the score

Not understanding

That men and women hurt in different ways

And that men of a certain age often safeguard themselves

Against feeling anything that might

Shake them up

Or upset them

George said that was unfair

But in the thirty years

That we’ve been married

I’ve never once

Seen him cry

Or heard him raise his voice

Or…

Come to the think of it

I’ve never even seen him sneeze

He’s burped a few times

But that’s about it

Funny the things you think have happened

That never have

What you fill in

What you…imagine

George wears a tie

And I see a man who loves me

He looks at me

And sees a dutiful wife

Who will never finish one damn book of poetry

That she started when she was nineteen

And who…

…Amuses him

A record plays

A mantel gathers dust

The forks and spoons

Sit silently on the napkin

Never to be used

George points to the clock

And says—

‘My god, it’s nine o’clock’

We’d been sitting there

Eating

For over three hours

Not looking at each other

Not saying a word

Probably wondering

How long it takes

To clean a house